Chapter 8: The Witness He Didn't Count On
The screen still held the transfer notice when Officer Ruiz came back into the room.
I couldn’t stop seeing the balance beneath it. The numbers had shrunk until the account no longer looked like the one I’d imagined waiting for my baby. I kept one hand over my stomach, as if my palm could guard what the money had been meant to protect.
“Can you add this to what you’re documenting?” I asked Ruiz.
She looked from the notice to me. “I can record what you’ve shown me and note that you say you didn’t authorize the transfer. I can’t tell you yet where that will lead.”
“I’m not asking you to tell me where it leads.” My voice came out thinner than I wanted. “I’m asking you to write down that it happened.”
Ruiz nodded. She didn’t take Megan’s phone. Instead, she asked Megan to keep the notice open while she recorded the date and the unfamiliar contact address. My sister saved the account messages we’d found, one after another, her mouth tight with concentration.
The simple sound of each tap made my shoulders tense.
“Do you want me to stop?” Megan asked.
“No.” I watched her thumb hover over the next notice. “Just don’t change anything.”
“I won’t.”
I believed she meant it. Believing her didn’t make the old anger disappear.
When Ruiz finished, she tucked her notebook away. “Dana is here again. She remembered something about the car and the direction it went. Would you be comfortable speaking with her?”
I glanced at Megan. “Yes.”
Dana came in with her coat still on, a paper cup clasped between both hands. She looked tired, and the careful way she approached the bed made me feel suddenly aware of the hospital gown, the blanket, the bruises on my arm.
“I’m sorry to bother you again,” she said.
“You’re not bothering me.”
She lowered the cup to the windowsill. “I went over it in my head after I got home. I remembered the car leaving with your purse still inside.”
My fingers curled against the blanket.
“I saw it on the passenger-side floor,” Dana continued. “The strap was hanging up near the seat. Then the car pulled away. He never looked back.”
The words didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t known. Eric had taken my purse. He’d driven away while I was alone, hurting, and asking him to come back.
But hearing another person place those moments in order made them harder to soften into some kinder story.
“He didn’t slow down?” Ruiz asked.
“Not that I saw.” Dana turned to me. “I’m sorry. I wish I’d seen more.”
“You saw what you saw,” I said. “That’s enough.”
Dana’s eyes shone, but she held my gaze. “The car went east at the light. Toward the businesses on Mill Road. I remember because I was deciding whether to follow him, and then I saw you try to stand.”
A hard pulse beat in my throat. “You thought about following him?”
“For a second. But you needed help right then.” She looked down at her cup. “I keep wondering if I should’ve done something different.”
“You called for help.” I swallowed. “You did the thing I was begging Eric to do.”
Dana’s mouth trembled. She nodded once, then stepped aside as Ruiz asked her a few more questions about the intersection and the direction of travel. I let the details wash past me: a traffic light, a row of shops, the stretch of road where the businesses began.
When Ruiz finished, Dana reached toward me, then stopped before touching my hand.
“I hope you and the baby are all right,” she said.
“Thank you for coming back.”
After she left, the room seemed quieter, though the monitor beside me continued its soft, steady pattern.
Megan sat down. She had saved the notices and returned to the screen, checking that each one was still there. She did it without asking me to praise her for helping.
I stared at her hands. Those same hands had written initials beside my name on a page she hadn’t seen me sign.
“I want you to stay,” I said.
She looked up quickly.
“But I’m still furious about those initials.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want you to tell me you didn’t mean to. I know you didn’t. That doesn’t undo what happened.”
Megan’s eyes filled. “I won’t ask you to forgive me tonight.”
The answer left no easy door open between us. Somehow, that made it easier to breathe.
“I need you here,” I said. “I just need you to understand that needing you isn’t the same as being over it.”
“I understand.”
Her hand rested on the edge of the blanket, close enough for me to reach and far enough that I could choose. I looked at it for a moment, then turned my palm up. Megan took my hand gently.
Ruiz’s radio crackled at her hip. She listened, then glanced toward the hallway.
“One of the shops along Mill Road is calling back,” she said. “The owner checked the camera.”
My grip tightened around Megan’s fingers.
Ruiz listened again, her expression changing by a fraction. “He says the recording shows Eric’s car.”
“Where?” I asked.
May you like
She looked at me.
“Stopping at a bank,” she said. “After he left you.”
